…The House Intelligence Committee will hold its closed hearing on the attack on Nov. 15, Fox News has learned. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, CIA Director David Petraeus and Matt Olsen, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, are expected to testify.

The Senate Intelligence Committee plans to meet the same day to discuss the Libya attack — that hearing will also be closed to the public.

Before Obama won we heard nothing. Not from the media, not from Obama.

Benghazi documents available to senators only when they are out of town

Under pressure from senators, the State Department is allowing some lawmakers to look at cables and other documents related to the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, but only today and tomorrow, when most senators are not in Washington.

…”We are currently in the process of gathering and reviewing record responsive to Congressional requests. Our efforts have already identified a large volume of potentially responsive records that address the security situation leading up to the attack,” State Department Assistant Secretary for Legislative Affairs David Adams wrote to Kerry on Nov. 2 in a letter obtained by The Cable.

“To facilitate your committee’s work, we want to offer you and other members of the committee the opportunity to review these cables and memoranda. This set of material contains classified and other sensitive information… Mindful of these concerns, the Department is prepared to make copies of these documents available for the committee’s in camera review.”

One senior GOP Senate staffer told The Cable that State is only making the documents available for senators and committee staff to view today and tomorrow, which won’t actually allow the members to prepare for the hearing. Staffers for committee members are also not allowed to see the material.

“Funny since no member is in town,” the aide said. “The timing and limited access clearly demonstrates the administration cares more about playing politics with the tragedy than accepting responsibility.”

Four Americans dead. At least two of them might have been saved if the help they begged for had been authorized by the president. None of them would have been killed if the president and pals had listened to the Ambassador about the deteriorating security on the ground. And then to top it all off the president and his pals went on show after show, giving speech after speech, telling the world that it was because of a silly little video. They knew it was bullshit then, they know it now. And all the while the MSM had their back.

openid.aol.com/runnswim

The truth will come out. Then we can revisit this. Until then, it’s all speculative armchair bloviation. It’s a waste of time and bandwidth to litigate this before all of the evidence has been presented and witnesses interviewed. After that’s been done, the jury can deliberate and render a verdict.

Hankster58

Rides A Pale Horse

Ok…….let’s see……….

One “open” hearing, three closed hearings, “invitations” to testify and “cables and documents” to be proffered at a time when NO ONE will be able to read them, not that it would make any difference since I’m sure that the “cables and documents will be slightly redacted as in the Fast and Furious toilet paper.http://i979.photobucket.com/albums/ae277/RAPH6969/102.jpg

Yup. Sure looks like everyone is really anxious to get to the bottom of this disaster.

Skookum

Larry, did the MSM wait for the investigation of Watergate to be completed before they speculated on the probabilities of guilt?

There is a chance, that without inquiries and the publishing of personal accounts, the public and certainly the media would be content to accept the president’s original tall tales at face value. You know, the original story, before it evolved into the mass of conflicting facts the administration has thrown out there through various sources within the regime.

Were falsehoods repeated? Obviously, unless all the stories are true, but like a lead boat, that is a hard one to float, especially during a storm like the one that is brewing.

Hankster58

Look for it to get WORSE… as Obama goes on… the DOJ is a joke, his SCOTUS picks a joke.. Foreign policy a joke.. his FEMA ACTIONS a joke.. STILL waiting to see, if the INSIDE PAGES, of that “Budget Brochure” he kept waving the last few weeks of his campaign, had ANYTHING printed on them!! The whole WORLD, is in chaos….
Humanity, in my opinion, is NOT “evolving”… people are DE-VOLVING!! The EVIL, lying, cheating, stealing, violence etc, is at a HISTORIC HIGH it seems.. and it’s EVERYWHERE anymore… Honesty is now a JOKE… Depravity.. a VIRTUE!! Good is BAD.. Bad is now the NEW GOOD… where id it all go wrong??? Was it, when people found, they no longer “HAD TO WORK’ to survive?? What??
God help us all….

johngalt

There is a chance, that without inquiries and the publishing of personal accounts, the public and certainly the media would be content to accept the president’s original tall tales at face value.

And that is the point that Larry is trying his damnedest not to see. If it was left up to the MSM, Benghazi would go quietly away. Move along now. Nothing to see here.

It is precisely because of blogs and alternative media that the fire is kept under the rumps of those who would otherwise not investigate anything. Good for them. And I’d feel the same way if the tables were turned, even if my opinion on it differed. I’d want to know the truth. And it’s obvious to anyone not blatantly cheering for Obama that without that fire, we’d see nothing.

openid.aol.com/runnswim

Both of you guys are not only thoughtful and courteous, but fair, and I really do appreciate that.

There are two types of debate tactics which I consider to be sophomoric:

1. “These data come from an article in the Huffington Post, which can’t be trusted, because they are all libs and they always lie.”

2. “Your point in this case isn’t valid, because the liberals (or the MSM, which is used to connote the same thing), in a totally different case, used the same tactics (or did the same thing) which you are now complaining about.”

As I stated in an earlier reply to Retire05, all Jews living today are not responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus Christ 2000 years ago, and I am not responsible for anything relating to Valerie Plame or Watergate. I never once, to my recollection, made a critical comment about the so-called Plame “outing.” I thought that it was a bit of a dirty trick; I thought it was probably illegal, based on what I read, but I didn’t consider it to be all that big a deal, in the general scheme of things.

Obviously, Watergate took place way before Al Gore invented the Internet, and I’m not sure that I understand your point, but I don’t think it’s comparable. Watergate unfolded over a very long time. What the press did was to focus mainly on digging into the facts of the case. After the facts came out, then the accusations started to come out.

We don’t have the facts, now. Based on the fragmentary information about the case, you guys are laying out a worst case conspiracy theory. Obama was personally asked to beef up security in Benghazi. His intelligence and security advisers recommended he do so. But he didn’t want to hurt the feelings of some Arabs and he didn’t want voters to doubt his “triumph” in handling the Libya situation. So he personally refused to beef up security.

Then, on 9/11/2012, he callously watched 4 Americans die, in real time video, while again ignoring the recommendations of his intelligence and military advisers, and crassly allowed these people to be slaughtered, motivated by his own selfish desire to be re-elected.

Based on the facts now available, I could spin a totally different story:

The Benghazi requests for more security went to a level in the State Department well below that of Hillary Clinton. The State Department employee(s) who received the request did not pass it along to the level of Clinton and it certainly never made it to the level of Obama. Funding was tight. Requests for increased security are reportedly always coming in from embassies all over the world. Some State Department officials definitely screwed up, but this all occurred at levels way below Obama, who was personally not informed about any of it.

On the night of 9/11, Obama wasn’t even informed about what was going on until 11 PM, Libya time. By 11:20 PM, two of the 4 people were already dead. That left two CIA agents, who were former Navy Seals. It was the middle of the night there. We had no idea how many terrorists were involved in the siege. We didn’t know where they were located. We didn’t know the extent to which innocent people in the area would have been at risk. It wasn’t like sending in a hit team to get Bin Laden, which was a mission planned with full intelligence and planned for months. Black Hawk Down does illustrate what can go wrong when rescue teams are sent into a hostile area with a poor understanding of what awaits them. Sending in a higher altitude gun ship and blasting away with cannons might kill a lot of innocents. Unlike other countries in the region, the Libyans love us — both the nascent Libyan government and also the Libyan people. We are nurturing a potentially valuable ally. We could easily turn both the government and Libyan people against us by blowing away a lot of innocent people in a rescue attempt for two professional, combat trained CIA agents, who did have assets on hand to hold out, hopefully until daylight and until a better assessment could have been made of conditions and difficulties and until an optimum rescue plan could have emerged.

With regard to the changing stories, it makes perfect sense to me that the President did initially know that terrorists were involved. He didn’t want to say too much in his Rose Garden speech, but it’s clear, in context, that he believed, at the time, that terrorists were involved, if all the facts were not yet in.

In the immediate aftermath, there was an explosion all over the Islamic world, CLEARLY motivated by “the film.” These were not terrorist attacks; they were demonstrations. So it became somewhat unclear; was this a demonstration co-opted by terrorists or was the whole thing terrorist from the beginning? Also. intelligence issues come in. How to identify and capture the terrorists involved? It would make perfect sense to me to take advantage of the anti-“film” demonstrations to flush out the perpetrators. Make them think that we just think it was just demonstrations. So they get careless, because they think that we are not on their trail. Or else, better still, they are unhappy that they aren’t getting the “credit” they “deserve;” so they get on the Internet and claim credit — and we track them down.

The point is that we don’t know the facts. I’d be crazy going all over the Internet and going on MSNBC and Current TV and claiming that, for certain, things went down according to the scenario I just outlined. It’s all just fanciful speculation. But that’s all the anti-Obama scenario is — fanciful speculation. But the charges being made on the basis of this fanciful speculation are just outrageous. Obama has “blood on his hands.” A worse scandal than Watergate. Blah blah blah.

And trying to justify it on the basis of some comparison with Valerie Plame or whatever is — as I said — just sophomoric.

It’s got nothing at all to do with it.

Or, as most of us should have learned in kindergarten, two wrongs don’t make a right.

retire05

How do you square that Hillary Clinton said she HAD requested additional security for the Benghazi complex, but it was denied by THE WHITE HOUSE? I am curious on how you intend to try to spin that one little fact?

What do we DO know?

Additional security, which Hillary claims she requested, was not granted.

The Obama administration approved the use of the February 17th Brigade, a terrorist organization, as security for U.S. Libyan interests

Four Americans were killed.

No help was sent to them.

Oh, and while we get photos of Obama in the Situation Room during the Abottabad raid and Sandy, oooops, no photo of Obama in the Sit Room during the Benghazi attack.

And we yet know what Obama was doing during that attack besides making a call to Netanyahu, at approx 6:45 p.m. EST, while the Benghazi attack was going on, which lasted for slightly over an hour. Was he trying to convince Israel to send help to our American FSOs?

Spin away, Larry, spin away.

And yes, Benghazi is worse than Watergate. No one even got the hiccups during Watergate, much less lost their lives.

Hankster58

Hankster58

As the The Benghazi cover up.. we have E-mails etc.. providing the timeline necessary, to show Obama lied. Cased closed. NIXON went down for FAR LESS…. so WHAT is the problem?? OH yeah, Forgot.. NIXON had both enough RESPECT for the Country… and a CONSCIENCE in the end… and resigned. Obama has neither.

Budvarakbar

@Skookum: Hey they put the supposed video “author” in jail for supposed parole violations that happened quite some time ago — apparently they did not have proof that he was the one that put up the You-Tube video — turns out the feds were pushing for 2 years — guy is lucky — a little more consolidation of the communist control in the USSA and he would have been charged with mass murder and given the shots — ala McVeigh. Now he just has to spend a year worrying about the moo-slimes in the next bed, shower stall – or cell!

Scott in Oklahoma

@Aqua: Valerie Plame wasn’t outed by Scooter Libby, in fact, she wasn’t even in a “protected position” at the CIA when she was brought out. There isn’t a comparisson between the Beghazi incident and anything Valerie Plame did, except that she was as corrupt as anyone in the Obama administration. But that’s another story.

Hankster58

Avery

It will come out in 20 years, long after it is relevant and only the historians and educated voters, about 20% of the electorate, will know the truth. Hopefully the Secret Service or the military will uphold their sworn oath in the next 4 years.

johngalt

Larry, that is exactly why there is speculation, rumors, and sources, all out there, all making claims. As they say, where there is smoke, there is typically a fire. Anyone who thinks the smoke is simply Obama’s pot roast burning is deluding themselves.

Smorgasbord

And he’s ours for four more years.

I don’t claim obama as “ours.” He is “theirs” in my opinion. As in their $1,000,000,000 deficit each year, their having no budget ever, their obamacare, their increased welfare spending, their abandoning our friends, etc., etc., etc.

Al Reasin

The stupidly of so many of our fellow citizens shows so vividly with what happened in Staten Island, NY. After cries of we are going to die, no electricity, the FEMA office closed due to weather, looting and lawlessness, major damage with next to no city, state, federal or even Red Cross assistance they voted for Obama. You couldn’t make this up and think people would believe it.

Nathan Blue

@Al Reasin: Remember that the media was careful to plaster the airwaves, print, and online articles with headlines like “Obama is doing a great job about Sandy! (Better than Bush and Katrina . . . remember that? Yeah, Obama is doing great . . . doing great).”

Aqua

I never once, to my recollection, made a critical comment about the so-called Plame “outing.”

That’s what I wanted to know. The longer it takes for the information to come out, the more speculation there will be. This is true for any administration and it will be true for this one.
Since Obama has been reelected, the matter of executive privilege over Fast and Furious is going before a court pretty soon. I doubt my advice would ever be taken by the Obama Administration, but if were them, I’d throw Holder under the bus and move on. He wants out anyway and I think he knows F&F is going to catch up to him in the next few months. He needs to do the same over Benghazi. Someone in a high level is going to need to resign. No matter what comes of the investigation, there can be little doubt that someone high up dropped the ball.